SDSU's Chase Tapley: From chubby kid to 'real man'

It is Senior Night at San Diego State, and Chase Tapley will walk to center court at Viejas Arena before tipoff with his parents, his godparents, his brother, his best friend from high school, and a 6-month-old boy with curly hair and an infectious smile.

Cayden.

His son.

Cayden was born to SDSU women’s basketball player Kiyana Stamps in October, the day before preseason practice opened, and Tapley has quietly spent his senior season – well, not always quietly (Cayden does cry sometimes) – taking turns on the bottle, changing diapers, nervously waking up at the slightest sound or movement on the occasion he allows himself to drift off to sleep. And being a student. And completing a basketball career that will rank among the greatest in school history.

And here’s the thing: You wouldn’t know it.

“He doesn’t talk about it, but I know it’s been really hard for him,” says junior guard Xavier Thames, his close friend since they were on the same peewee football team as 8-year-olds in Sacramento. “He just goes out every day and works hard in practices and games. Praise him for that. He doesn’t complain. He doesn’t make any excuses at all. He's become a real man.”

“A lot of people take the easy way out,” says Alice Tapley, his mother. “He’s stepped to the plate and accepted his responsibility and he’s being a man. We’re proud of him.”

But, really, should anyone be surprised?

Tapley is a master of making the difficult look easy. Been doing it since the days of torching an opponent for 30 in youth basketball and everyone just assuming that his father, who played at Arkansas State, had him working out constantly and his mother having to set everyone straight – that the truth was Chase was at home watching the Disney Channel all day, waiting for the next meal.

“He never really practiced, it was all natural ability,” Alice Tapley says. “A lot of people thought he was in the gym all the time. He was never, ever in the gym … He never really got off the couch. He was really an indoor person. He wasn’t an outdoor kid. I never had to worry about going outside and chasing him down.”

He played baseball and football and soccer as a kid … because his mother signed him up. Anything to get him out of the house.

He was a first baseman. A goalie. A left tackle. A basketball center.

Sensing a pattern here?

“I’m not going to lie,” Tapley says. “I was a little chunky kid.”

“My chubby Chase,” Alice says.

The coaches with the Natomas Jr. Nighthawks peewee football team took one look at the 8-year-old lump of cheese, issued him a high number and started teaching him a three-point stance. He’d block for their speedy running back, Xavier Thames.

And a basketball star was born.

Tapley picks up the story here:

“I did not want to be a lineman. They said, ‘You’re big. You’re on the line.’ I was like, I didn’t sign up for this. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t wait for that football season to be over. The next football season, I graduated to tight end. They had only one (pass) play, so basically I was doing the same thing. As a tight end, they made it seem like you were a receiver. But I was still blocking.

“After that I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to play basketball.’”

That meant his father, Tommy, would take a more active role in his athletic life. He never nudged his son into basketball – didn’t want to shove him into the family gene pool – but if he was going to play then he was going to play the right way. That meant developing a left hand. That meant playing defense. That meant passing. That meant practicing. That meant being tough.

It spawned what Tapley calls “a love/hate relationship” with his father and basketball.

“It’s been more love than hate,” he says. “But there have been times where we haven’t talked to each other, and still to this day it’s like that sometimes. He’s my biggest supporter but sometimes he gets frustrated with how I play and I get frustrated with him.”

But it’s a voice, a conscience, “just a little look like you’re weak,” that has been chiseled into his psyche. Tapley badly twists a knee in practice early this season, and he hears his father sarcastically chiding him: “You’re not going to play?” And he’s back on the court a week later for the historic victory against UCLA when the initial prognosis was two or three, or more.

He gets the flu before the Colorado State game and is hooked up to an IV. And plays anyway because his parents drove down for the game and he didn’t want to disappoint them, scoring 12 of SDSU’s 16 points in overtime of the 79-72 win. He sprains the wrist on his shooting hand and plays anyway against Air Force even though he can’t shoot.

His wrist is still hurting four days later and he has missed 12 straight 3-pointers when the ball fortuitously rolls to him through a forest of players in the final seconds against Boise State. He hears that voice, sees that look. And shoots it anyway. Wins the game.

He has 100 victories now in his career, five short of the school record held by D.J. Gay. He should become the first player in SDSU history to reach the NCAA Tournaments four times. He’ll finish career in the Top 5 in scoring and a half-dozen other major statistical categories.

So difficult.

So easy.

“Now as you watch him as a senior, I really think he’s blossomed into a complete basketball player,” SDSU coach Steve Fisher says. “He’s thinking one play ahead, one pass ahead, every time. He knows how to play. He makes everybody else better, at both ends of the floor. And that’s about as high a compliment as you can pay to a player.”

It is a personal growth, a maturity, reflected in his life. In the eyes of a kid with curly hair and an infectious smile.

Tapley first learned of Stamp’s pregnancy toward the end of last season and initially kept it from his parents. He told them in the spring, fearing the worst, just as he feared telling his teammates.

“I was worried how my bros would take it,” he says. “It’s human nature. Are they going to look at me differently, treat me differently? When they found out, they were as excited as I was, and that really helped me with the process of having a kid and not being stressed out. They’ve been really supportive.”

Supportive being a relative term, of course. They threw him a baby shower. They haven’t changed any diapers.

Stamps, a junior guard from Moreno Valley, has returned to the Aztec women’s team, playing in 15 games for a 22-5 team that could clinch a second straight Mountain West title at Air Force on Wednesday. They alternate watching Cayden depending on their schedules, which are opposite one another; when the men’s team is home, the women are on the road, and vice versa.

The other night, Stamps tweeted at 9:43 p.m.: My fat boy is finally asleep … now back to this hw!! … looks like an all nighter. Ugh. #Godgivemestrength

“Kiyana, she’s done a great job with her situation, being a basketball player and how she’s dealt with it,” Tapley says. “I can’t see another girl doing it the way she has. She came back pretty quick after the pregnancy. It shows how strong she is.”

It helps, too, that both their parents make regular trips to San Diego, and that Cayden is starting to sleep through the night.

“I can’t say I’m back to the old Chase because everything since Oct. 11 has been a new Chase, basically,” Tapley says. “You don’t know how much your life changes when you have a kid. Your priorities are really different. It’s not just about me. You think about life more than basketball. Everything becomes serious.

“You look at your son and you say, ‘Man, it’s a great feeling to have a son.’ You realize, life is so beautiful.”